


for you, I'll live. for you, I'll love.

by ari_sia



Category: Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Drabble, Fluff, Like a lil bit - Freeform, M/M, idk - Freeform, one soft insecure gay boi just trying to tell his boyfriend he lobes him, yea.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:20:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23029213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ari_sia/pseuds/ari_sia
Summary: Aman has always been scared of being loved. Kartik left those fears in the same gutter his father threw him in after beating him up for being in love with a boy.
Relationships: Kartik Singh/Aman Tripathi
Comments: 22
Kudos: 85





	for you, I'll live. for you, I'll love.

The night is quiet. It almost deafens Aman. Only two hours ago the courtyard was ringing with his mother’s sharp voice taunting his father about upholding a relationship.

“Getting into a relationship is easy”, her voice is burning with anger and yet she’s calm, “But upholding it is not something everyone is capable of”

It stung. He doesn’t know if his father even cares to listen to his mother anymore but Aman listens. He’s always been listening. And he doesn’t think it was good for him.

There is something very self-destructive about listening to things that you are not meant to hear and he’s only now realizing it. He always realizes things too late.

Aman is a lot of things. He’s the kid who watched his cousins fight and instead of calming them down always added fuel to the fire. He’s the kid who always got good grades but never the best. He was a good friend but never too helpful, never too kind, never too available. It all made is so easy for him to fade into the background. What makes Aman real, is the fact that he isn’t real.

He accepts his Indian parents’ conditional love. He writhes in pain when he’s sick and cries alone because he cannot demand attention. That’s for girls, he is told. He doesn’t cry in front his father when he laughs off how other boys teased him for being dark, short and skinny. He doesn’t cry when his mother slapped him and threw him out of her room for just trying on one of her sarees.

He accepted the conditional love they had to give him and gave them his conditional love in return.

He doesn’t say anything when he realizes that suddenly he’s too aware of Gaurav’s hands on his back or how his ears perk up when he hears his voice calling out his name or how his smug smile started to seem kind of charming. He doesn’t speak a word when he realizes Gaurav treats him a little more softly and it makes Aman happy. Ecstatic. This isn’t what he was taught. This isn’t what he expected. But he knew what he felt couldn’t be anything else. He doesn’t speak a word when he realizes this is love and he fell a long time ago.

He doesn’t know why but his sister starts to hug him for a little longer and holds him a little tighter. He appreciates it but never says anything.Back then, the attention felt a little unsettling, like she knew something he didn’t want her to know.

Years later when he’ll ask her, she’ll tell him that he treated Gaurav so softly even someone with one eye could see how deep in love he was. He never understood that.

His mother calls out his name breaking the silence. Aman reluctantly looks away from the night sky and tells her he’s coming down in five minutes.

-

He has five days.

-

Kartik calls but Aman brushes him off saying he’s busy with his family. He’s good at avoiding people but he’s never felt bad about it, until now. Until Kartik. Kartik is everything Aman has spent his life avoiding. He’s loud, he’s proud, he’s attracts attention, he speaks what he thinks, he’s bold and Aman is absolutely awestruck. Their colleagues think that Aman loathes Kartik, mostly because of the sarcasm and Aman’s inability to be nice to someone who cares for him but that couldn’t be far from the truth. Aman was completely flustered by the flirting but it also made him oddly happy. It was quite probably one of the few instances in his life where he actually liked the attention which is why it wasn’t hard to figure out that he liked Kartik.

But the problem was that Kartik liked him back.

-

_‘Nahi hoga mujhse.’_

-

Karthik is brave. He is an absolute dumbass and an idiot but he’s brave and it’s this bravery Aman looks upto. Unlike Aman, Karthik isn’t scared of being loved which is why Aman believes that if there’s anyone who deserves love, it’s him.

Aman cannot love. He’s incapable of loving. All he can do is lie and hide. He cannot love.

His phone’s ringing. He stares at Kartik’s name until the screen fades to black.

Kartik has always been persistent. Aman had no room for hope whereas Kartik was constantly fighting for it. Kartik would see a semblance of happiness in his life and he would fight for it. That was what life had taught him. Aman on the other hand gave up before the fight had even begun. Yes, Aman wanted to pick up the call and reply to his texts more than anything but he was too much of a coward to do that.

And Kartik’s honesty doesn’t deserve his cowardice.

-

‘I am not what you want.’

Technically telling your boyfriend of two weeks that and running off to your home is not a good move but things happen and your insecurities take over. He tries to label it as an insecurity but he knows, he knows he is not good enough. He is not what Kartik wants. He is just mistaken.

Sometimes Kartik will do things Aman knows he can’t be a part of. Aman refuses to dance in front of people he doesn’t know, Aman refuses to sing, Aman refuses to even show affection in public, Aman refuses to say anything remotely cheesy beyond text messages, Aman cannot be what Kartik wants. He cannot. But Kartik won’t believe him.

“It’s about souls”, that dramatic asshole had the balls to tell him, “Not about our personalities. Our souls call out to each other”

It took every ounce of self-restraint to not stab him right there. Well, that and the fact that he could never bring himself to hurt Kartik. He loved him too much.

Fuck. He loves him too much.

-

He has three days.

-

“You’re hiding something from me.”, his mother seems to be her usual know-it-all mood. Aman just scoffs which offends her.

“I am your mother. Don’t think I don’t know everything about you.”

“Yeah? The why don’t you just tell me what I am hiding.”

His mother smacks his head, “Next time you use that tongue to insult your mother, be ready to part with it forever. Are you going to tell me what is wrong or are you going to lock yourself away like your father?”

“Ma. If you’re mad at dad then why are you taking it out on me? Go bother him.”

“No one in this house cares about this family. I have to take care of everyone but no one is ready to even be honest with me. None of you understand how delicate relationships are.”

Aman stares at his mother for half a second before a nonchalant, “sucks” slips out of his mouth. His mother huffs and leaves, slamming the door on her way out.

“It’s easy to create a relationship. Upholding it is the hard part.” Aman shamelessly copies his mother’s words as he types, “I’ve said this before but you don’t listen to me. I’m not who you think I am. I am not what you want. We’re simply too different. I love you but that doesn’t mean I know how to love someone, or how to be with someone for that matter. I’m sorry.”

He presses send.

-

He has one day left.

-

He doesn’t get a reply the whole day or a call. He understands. He wants to, at least. After all, this is what he wanted. Maybe a small part of him really wanted Kartik to hold on to him. For once, Aman wanted to be real for someone.

He keeps bouncing his leg throughout the dinner and his mother gives him a look which he blatantly ignores. And while there is a piece of his father’s experimental grey-ish cauliflower stuck in his mouth he realizes he just wanted to push Kartik away as far as he could to test if he would come back for Aman and somehow the cauliflower’s taste seems to get even worse than before.

He cries unapologetically that night.

He’s tired of who he is. He’s tired of running away from people whose love and affection he craves for. He is tired of feeling guilty for receiving any affection from his parents because he feels like he is betraying them by hiding who is really is. They will fall apart if they ever found out and Aman knows he can’t hide forever. Kartik too, will realize who he really is one day and when everything falls apart Aman doesn’t know if he will have the strength to go on.

He’s been preparing for the day he loses his family ever since he was twelve but losing Kartik is not a thought he can fathom.

and yet here he is, breaking, after pushing away the one person who told him that he loved him for who he is.

-

An hour before he’s supposed to reach the station, his phone vibrates in his pocket. Half an hour later, he knows why it was so hard for his parents to uphold a relationship.

For that, love must be present somewhere in the equation.

-

_Mere liye tum kaafi ho._

-

Aman did not tell Kartik he was coming back but he still searched the crowd. Kartik was there. Kartik was there for him.

For the first time in his life Aman found himself not caring what people would think if he ran into another man’s arms.

-

That night when Kartik sang that song for him under the shelter of the stars caressing his face softly, as if he were made of glass, Aman knew that he willingly gave away a piece of his soul to the man whose teary eyes were stuck to him instead of the stars.

They held each other as they cried softly. They still have a long way to go. A lot of things to talk about. But if there was one thing he was certain of now it was that he loved Kartik with everything he had and he would do anything to let him know that. Aman is short, dark and skinny, he’s never been in a fight he’s won, he’s always had a low tolerance for pain and has never really done anything extraordinary in his life but for Kartik, he would level civilizations if he had to.

Come what may, he would love this man for as long as there was breath in his body. He would destroy himself and build himself anew to love Kartik.

After all, their souls called out to each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!  
> Leave a comment or come scream at me on my tumblr: https://username-ari-ver9.tumblr.com/


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